Albatross (Crimson SkiesBattlestar Galactica)
by DrMckay
Summary: It was quietly spoken among the Romany that there that there were people born under a lucky star. Even so, it was known that such individuals were not destined for a happy life. For the sole survivor of the Zingari family, Lady Luck was one capricious bitch.


Albatross

**Author's Note:** This story was originally outlined after Season 3 of Battlestar, when Kara disappeared in the gas giant. As much as I love crossovers, I toyed with the idea of where she could have ended up, and the mad sky-pirate and zeppelin world of Crimson Skies, with its misanthropic captain appealed to me.

It took me a while to polish and finish, but here it is now.

I don't own Battlestar or Crimson Skies, but a Bear McCreary swing soundtrack would be awesome to dogfight to.

Oh, and I also snuck an actor in there.

Albatross (Crimson Skies/Battlestar Galactica)

_"They call you lady luck  
But there is room for doubt  
At times you have a very un-lady-like way  
Of running out." _

**~Luck Be a Lady, ** **Frank Loesser **

It was quietly spoken among the Romany that there that there were people born under a lucky star. Even so, it was known that such individuals were not destined for a happy life.

For the sole survivor of the Zingari family, Lady Luck was one capricious bitch.

Nathan had survived flight training and aerial combat in the Great War. No mean achievement itself, when more pilots died in training than combat, before getting shot down and rotting for two years in a Hun prison camp.

After the War, he took the the name Zachary, and used his saved army pay to open a brokerage firm in New York, determined to give his family the American Dream.

The Second Influenza Outbreak put paid to that, taking his family before the States sealed their borders for the first, but not the last time, and he alone was spared. The now-useless fortune he had made in the stock market hung around his neck, leaving him strangely freed when he lost most of it in the Crash.

Nathan Zachary pooled the last of last of his funds with the last of his friends, and ended up hijacking an Empire State military Zep.

He decided to call it, _Pandora_, and told his crew that was the only non-urgent decision he wouldn't hold a vote for. The _Pandora_ committee elected him provisional Captain and voted to slap some more guns on it.

Suddenly, almost unintentionally, the "Fortune Hunters" were born.

As the States became nations, he flew it around taking odd jobs and saving folks as lost as he was, somehow surviving the chaos and uncertainty of the United States of America splintering into fractious regions,constantly at war.

Yesterday he was the Captain-Owner of the pirate airship _Pandora,_ master of his own fate, sailing with a crew he would trust without hesitation.

Today, when Nathan Zachary is chained to a post, and left alone to hang by his hands in the _Pandora's _hangar gantry, his ship taken by a squad of Militia troopers from the City of Angels.

_Born under a lucky star my ass._

Today all of Nathan Zachary's famed luck and cunning had availed him little, and Big John was like to blow a gasket on account of how those ham-handed troopers were handling his lady.

Nathan was out of ideas. He and his crew were in it deep, surrounded by troopers of the Hollywood Militia and being flown to Los Angeles on their own ship,for a speedy trial and execution as Sky Pirates.

But he never stops trying, sliding the cuffs around on the rails, heedless of the cuts around his wrists and trying to remember drinking with that magician in the tiny settlement of Los Vegas, who said he had broken his hand and slid it out of the cuffs one time and it hadn't hardly hurt.

Then Nathan realizes he's not alone.

His eyes took a few minutes to adjust to the darkness of the hangar, and when they did, he noticed her, crouching in a dark corner of the landing bay.

All he could see in the shadows was short blond hair like Betty, but a harder face, and an odd, shiny coverall that had been soaked, grimed and torn up all to hell. Nathan wasn't sure where she vame from but he guessed she had sneaked aboard the zep during their aborted delivery to the McAndrews Gang on Drake's Beach.

Before the Johnnie Laws had shown up with their Thompsons and ack-ack guns on the cliffs to surround them.

Nathan made a "Come over here" gesture with his head, and held up his manacled hands. The woman rolled her eyes and moved slowly from the cover, sweeping the room with a deadly-looking handgun as she did so before eventually reaching Nathan's position on the gantry.

When she came closer, he noticed that the coverall, stained and stained and torn though it was looked like a flightsuit, and bore unit labels and patches in an incomprehensible dialect. A pilot, he thought, missing from her crew.

Oh. Yeah. And she was beautiful. Not the soft movie-starlet kind, but the harsh beauty of a hunter, eyes sweeping for threats, and an air of barely-restrained violence.

"Name's Nathan." he said pointing a thumb at himself and wincing as his cuffs cut into his wrists again.

"Nay-than" The woman muttered his name quietly, in a musical lilt, nodding as if it was unfamiliar to her. Then she pointed at her own face. "Kara"

Her features were European, but it didn't sound like she knew much English.

She did know from handcuffs, and the locks took about two minutes as she found some bolt-cutters in the mechanic's office.

By then, Nathan was hooked as they carried on a quiet muttered conversation mostly of gesticulation and tone, Nathan's polyglot upringing managing to weave a tale of his current predicament, or so he hoped.

He didn't hope in vain. Nathan ran to the mechanic's bench where where the heavy tools were and also were stashed and produced a .32 automatic and some brass knuckles from a very specific toolbox.

Kara just smiled slowly and pulled out her handcannon. And a roll of duct tape.

They worked the ship as a team, in perfect synchronity, doubling up on each guard covering the crew quarters before tying them up and duct-taping their mouths so they can't warn their friends.

Nathan gets a subdued cheer from the crew, a backslap from Big John and Kara gets a quizzical but enthusastic hug from Betty as they open the door.

Taking the Bridge is a piece of cake. Big John plays with a couple of valves in engineering, grabs something very specific from an Ordnance Locker, and then fiddles with a few more pipes and gaskets.

Five minutes later, Nathan retakes the bridge as the remainder of the militia squad rush out of the bridge coughing, with their eyes steaming, straight into the masked and armed Pandora crew.

_Gas_, nathan thinks, _is a bastard's weapon. Teargas less so because they're alive at the end of it, and they only THINK they're gonna hack their lungs out._

This time they're lucky. This time nobody dies when they retake the ship. It's a good day.

The Milita Troopers are disarmed and stripped to their drawers and as they stand on the same gantry Nathan was cuffed to, under the guns of his crewin the furthest thing from their Sunday best, they don't look so intimidating.

Nathan allows himself an evil little grin, relishing the reactions of the subdued Troopers as it worms its way across his face, and Kara and Betty step up behind him on either side, looking down at them like Valkaries choosing their slain.

Their Lieutenant, a braver man than most despite looking like a soldier straight out of the pictures, steps forward with a face like chisled granite; "Don't shoot my men down," he says, eyes downward, "Me if you have to, by preference. My responsibility."

Nathan stares down at him, rubbing the bandages on his wrists, scrapes some stubble on his chin and pretends to think about it. "Not a lot of scars for a soldier-boy. Got a name Lieutenant?"

"Morrison." he says, looking the pirate straight in the eyes now, "Marion Morrison."

"Never heard of you." Nathan says, staring straight back down, It's a cheap theatrical trick, but he knows it gives him presence.

You all strung me up in my own hold like a side of meat awaitng a butchery. I've talked to the crew and we came up with an agreement, like. We're going to give you a parole. We let you go, and you don't ever fight us again. You go up, you hear we're near, you stand down.

Morrison nods, and his men do likewise.

Nathan just goes on. "My people have good memories. We catch any of you again like this, it's a bullet."

Nathan gives Crewman Gates a nod out of sight of the prisoners, and the launch bay of the Pandora creaks open, blue-green waters of the Pacific Ocean rushing past below them, and coming closer.

Big John takes his _Pandora_ to thirty feet above the waves, and the ship pelts along, cool sea air pulling out the lingering smells of cordite and Tear Gas.

"I figure," Zachary shouts, "Parole's as good as granted. You gentlemen can part company with us now, or when we get overland, which'll be in about twenty minutes. It'll be from the same altitude, and I ain't wasting a chute on you."

He tosses Morrison a large bundle of inflatable raft. "Pull the Red tab Lieutenant."

The other man nods a thank you, and _Pandora_ holds steady at twenty feet, the tallest high dive in a municipal pool.

Lieutenant Morisson turns to his men, "Darnall and sanchez first, by the numbers!" and they file over the gantry, one at a time, as the Pandora's crew stares out the portholes at their height, seeing the coastline not five-hundred yards from their position, jostling each other about a good joke played on the "Revenooers."

Captain Zachary braces his bandaged arms behind his back. "Well done everyone. Get to your stations and we'll see port call in Arixo by tomorrow!" With payment thank god, because they've still got the cargo."

Cheers resound and his men disperse to their duites. Nathan allows himself a small smile at that, and is reassured as he looks at Kara, an easy grin gracing her features.

He's got killers on his crew, but none of them go looking for it, not like the Skulls or the Cajuns, and he doesn't think she will either.

_Pandora _starts gaining altitude again and Gates punches the button to close the bay doors, while Nathan goes to the intercom and congratulates Big John Washington on one hell of a piece of flying.

The taciturn and self-effacing First Officer merely mutters about checking for possible salt corrosion before signing off.

Betty's over with Sparks getting the latest news from the wireless, and suddenly it's just him and Kara standing near where they met, and it's getting a little uncomfortable.

Nathan isn't sure what to do beyond expansively waving his left hand around, while holding out his right. He figures she's earned a place with them until she can figure out her bearings.

Kara wrinkles her brow for a moment, and then shakes his hand briefly, with a strong grip, before her eyes fix on something in the upper gantry.

Then her expression changes and he sees that she's looking up at his Devastator, hidden away in the low light of the upper gantry, and for the first time since he saw her, the expression softened to become one of love and longing. Nathan waves a magnanimous assent and she pelts up the landing like a kid on Christmas morning.

He follows at a more sedate pace, taking in the lines of his lady, long nose and canted wings, cockpit set far back and a pusher nacelle seated far behind, with four .50s waiting to unleash hell on anyone foolish enough to get in front of them.

"I'm guessing you have something similar?" he asks.

Kara doesn't answer. Instead she stares at it, enraptured, with the same expression he had the first time he saw the graceful, dependable aircraft that would become his signature.

Right before he stole it hot off of the Hughes production line.

He decides to hold off on trying to kiss her until he steals her another one.

Whatever else, Kara was a pilot. He was sure of that much, and as she walked up to the side of his girl, pointed at the name next to the cockpit, the legend of _Nathan "Gypsy" Zachary _written across the cowling as flamboyant as his personality.

"Starbuck" she said, pointing at the pilot's chair and making a motion of hauling back on a stick, and then at herself, feet standing on the metal decking near it. "Kara."

At the end of the day, it's as simple as that.

Over the next few weeks, words had spilled from her faster and faster, the gist of it was she was from a ship called _Galactica_, which was lost, and beyond lost.

Betty and Tex had taken to her right away, and the three dames did nearly everything together, barfights especially.

The girl had a decent knack for engines, and started hand-checking all of the ammo, discarding shells seemingly at random. _Pandora's _guns never jammed after that.

As her English was getting better, she had mimed a drawing motion, and Nathan had picked up a dollar set of paints, motioning to the walls of her small cabin, "you can paint here" he said.

She had smiled, rolled her eyes, and within a week the hallway around the crew quarters was decorated with whorls of color and branching lines that made the space seem bigger somehow.

When Kara had enough of the language to handle talking on the wireless, and the crew had stolen her a Devestator, she started flying missions. Nathan got his kiss, learned Kara's last name and was vindicated in his decision to look out for her all this time.

Kara Thrace handled an aeroplane as if she possessed an angel's wings.

The next time Nathan tangled with Johnathan Khan's Red Skulls, the former grifter was down ten planes, six pilots, and a reputation for only choosing winning battles.

Kara didn't paint any kill markers on her Devestator, now painted white with red stripes and the playing card insignia of the Fortune Hunters.

She just docked with the _Pandora_ and got drunk while finding a poker game with some of the riggers.

It became a ritual. No kill markers, poker, and a nasty jar of Big John's homebrew. Nathan would find her at the Pandora's tiny aft observation dome some nights, staring up through the thick glass at the stars beyond it, looking more at home in that instant than any other time he saw her.

Often in the evenings, as the light died Nathan would bring up a thermos of vile black coffee, and the two of them would trade stories of combat flying and adventures, some he didn't know how to believe, as the stars came up.

It was snug, but somehow neither of them minded, and they'd sit and drink coffee in their home in the sky.

Two albatrosses gliding along, elegant in flight, but never wanting to touch ground.

Alone together, forever free.

-End-


End file.
